cancel(1)

✨ cancel(1) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the manual page for cancel — she's a section 1 command (iykyk, that's user commands), and she ships with OpenPrinting's CUPS situation. if your printer is out here printing the wrong thing at 2am, this is your girl. 💅

---

NAME 🎀

cancel — literally just: cancel jobs. that's it. that's the whole vibe.

---

SYNOPSIS 🌸

cancel [ -h hostname[:port] ] [ -E ] [ -U username ] [ -a ] [ -u
username ] [ -x ] [ id ] [ destination ] [ destination-id ]

yes she has a lot of options. no we are not skipping any of them. sit down, hydrate, let's go. 🦋

---

DESCRIPTION 💖

cancel cancels print jobs. periodt.

and if you give her no destination and no id? she doesn't just do nothing, bestie — she goes for the currently printing job on the default destination. so with zero arguments she's still out there working, canceling the thing that's actively printing. main character energy, honestly.

---

OPTIONS ✨

these are all the flags cancel recognizes. every single one, no crumbs left behind:

• -a — cancel all the jobs on the named destination. and if you didn't name a destination? she cancels all jobs on all destinations. absolute chaos, we love her for it.
• -E — forces encryption when connecting to the server. safety first, always. 🔒
• -h hostname[:port] — picks an alternate server for you. ⚠️ note: this option has to come before all the others. like, it's the one that needs to be first in line. no cutting, no exceptions.
• -U username — sets which username to use when connecting to the server. (this is the connect as one, don't mix her up with -u, okay?)
• -u username — cancels jobs owned by username. so you're canceling someone's stuff by their name. this is the whose jobs one. 💅
• -x — deletes the job data files in addition to canceling. so she doesn't just cancel, she also cleans up the evidence. 🧹

lowkey important: -h has to go first. if you put it anywhere else she's not gonna have a good time.

---

CONFORMING TO 🦋

so here's the tea: CUPS is not like the System V printing system, and she wants you to know it.

CUPS lets printer names contain any printable character — with these four exceptions:

• SPACE
• TAB
• "/"
• "#"

also, printer names and class names are not case-sensitive. so MyPrinter and myprinter are the same girl. no cap. 🌈

---

EXAMPLES 🌟

want to cancel the current print job? say less:

cancel

want to cancel job "myprinter-42" specifically? iconic, here:

cancel myprinter-42

want to cancel everything? unhinged but valid:

cancel -a

---

NOTES 💀

okay so the -a and -u username options require administrative access. you can't just roll up and use them, bestie, you need the permissions.

and why? because these restrictions are literally part of the operation policies defined in the cupsd.conf(5) file — for the "Cancel-Jobs" and "Cancel-My-Jobs" operations, respectively. so if it's not working, that's where you go look. 🙈

---

SEE ALSO 👑

go read these next, they're all part of the same friend group:

• cupsd.conf(5)
• lp(1)
• lpmove(8)
• lpstat(1)
• CUPS Online Help (http://localhost:631/help)

---

COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright © 2020-2024 by OpenPrinting.

---

and that's the whole page, bestie! 🫶 this cutie was brought to you by CUPS and OpenPrinting, dated 2026-03-06, living her best life as cancel(1). now go forth and cancel responsibly. mwah. 💖✨